


Between the map and the territory

by vaguely_concerned



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Behold my niche genre, Fluff, Gen, Tenderness, baby sleeping in dad's arms and Din having overwhelmed thoughts about parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:07:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23350675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguely_concerned/pseuds/vaguely_concerned
Summary: The child sleeps, small and sweetly soft and innocent under his hand.The universe is not kind to small and soft and innocent things.
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 176





	Between the map and the territory

The child sleeps, small and sweetly soft and innocent under his hand.

The universe is not kind to small and soft and innocent things. 

Din shifts where he’s sitting leaned back in the pilot’s chair and glances down at the kid sleeping on his chest, tucking the blanket more securely around the little body, although more to reassure himself than out of necessity. The baby breathes quietly, mythosaur pendant slowly slipping out of his sleep-slackened mouth. A strange ache lives behind Din’s breastbone these days, like something too vast for his ribs to comfortably contain has made its home in there.

He wonders sometimes if this is how every parent feels — if his mom and dad once sat with him like this and felt the weight of the universe settling on them differently, the world shifting around a new pivot and sending everything spinning into fresh and confusing orbits. He wishes he could ask them. He keeps finding new ways of rediscovering absence, like he’s filling in a map of an alien territory with only phantom pains to tell him where something — someone — should have been. 

He wishes he could ask them what you _do_ with this. Before he found the kid it had been over half a lifetime since he was last truly afraid. Fear had been there, of course, but as a distant thing, something that happened beyond a haze of numbing mist that took the worst of the sting off it. It had had nothing on this. 

The baby smacks his lips in his sleep, his hand curling and uncurling against the beskar of the breastplate as he kicks his legs to settle into a new position and then promptly goes limp again with a contented little snore. Din rocks him gently, reflexively, running his thumb over the baby’s back. 

The universe is not kind to small and soft and innocent things, and now it’s Din’s job to get the kid through it all unscathed anyway. It seems like a hell of a long shot. 

Oh well. He’s gone for long shots before, and for far worse reasons. It’s not like anything’s going to change the fact that Din would live and die, would do anything asked of him, just to give the kid a fighting chance. Might as well make the choice to work on the assumption that that matters somehow, somewhere deep in the fabric of things, however small it might seem in the grand scheme of an indifferent universe. Maybe that’s how his parents did it too. 

_Here’s to beating the odds, kid,_ Din thinks, carefully cupping the back of the baby’s head in his hand and cradling him a little closer.

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is really short, but I decided I'd archive it properly here instead of letting it hover in the eternal limbo that is tumblr haha!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Between the map and the territory [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24398374) by [blackglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackglass/pseuds/blackglass)




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